In the progress of an information-oriented society, leakage of information present in images becomes a serious problem and development of a technology for preventing information leakage is demanded. Machine reading or human analysis of images can disclose Information that is present in the image and can reveal details regarding the subject, place, time, location and other information that can be gathered from the image.
File encryption solutions considers images as data file and hence images cannot be previewed after encryption. Without image preview there is no context for the encrypted image and is identified only with its file name.
On a search of prior art patents, it is seen that a number of patents are there in the field of image processing method and apparatus for privacy protection of details of images. Patent numbers EP 2791855 A4; US 20130283061 A1; US 20140140575 A1; US 20110096922 A1; US 20120250951 A1; US 8830221 B2; and WO 2014028009 A1; are mentioned here by way of reference. Though these Patents/Patent applications can be considered relevant, as they define the general state of the art, they cannot be considered to have any particular relevance to the present invention.
To obviate the drawback of the existing system, we have come out with an image protection system, which encrypt the image as image, which is visible on image viewer as preview image. Said preview image provides a context for the encrypted image without revealing finer detail and enables the user to identify the content of image without decrypting the same and the original Image is viewed with this apparatus or method by decrypting with proper authentication.